Part 2
Paul called Joel before Audrey’s van left the driveway and stopped the Monday start. He said there were four bobcat kittens in the bottomland, one headed to a veterinarian, and that the planned road crossed the place where the family was sheltering.
“You want me to move the road or stop the whole job?” Joel asked.
“Stop until we know where it can go.”
Joel was quiet long enough for Paul to hear an engine idling behind him. Then he said he’d come out the next morning, but Paul needed to understand that the equipment, hauler, and crew couldn’t simply wait without costing somebody money.
“I understand.”
“You understand your end. We’ll talk about mine tomorrow.”
There was no anger in it yet. Joel had started at the hospital as a maintenance helper, back when Paul could still climb a ladder without considering the trip down. Even after leaving to work with his father’s logging business, he’d come by the house each fall to help service the furnace; Paul had never managed to pay him for it.
Inside, Tess had laid the roof contract and lumber estimates on the table. Beside them sat his coffee, with the lid still on.
“We can probably leave the steps another year,” he said.
“We don’t know what we can leave. Sit down.”
He remained at the sink, washing dirt from the crease of his thumb. She waited until he turned off the water.
“How long have you been seeing them?”
“Couple of weeks. Less.”
“You could’ve told me.”
“I didn’t think there was anything to tell.”
Tess looked toward the meadow through the window over the sink. At forty, she worked long shifts as a respiratory therapist, and Paul still checked the clock before calling her, trying to remember that week’s schedule.
“We talked for half an hour Wednesday,” she said. “About the roofer’s payment schedule.”
“I needed you to look at it.”
“I know.” She smoothed a bent corner of the contract. “We could’ve sat on the porch and watched them. I would’ve liked that.”
He started to say the kittens were still there. Tess set the contract down before he could.
“You would’ve called Mom in from the kitchen.”
He reached for the dish towel. It had been six years, and he still knew which hook Marian would have used.
“Yes,” he said.
Tess lifted her coffee, found it empty, and put it down again. Paul turned the other cup toward her, but she shook her head.
They removed the old fencing from the shed side of the drain, keeping clear of the chestnut as Audrey had instructed. Paul carried the panel to the scrap bin.
Tess held the bucket while he collected the cut pieces. Once, she steadied his elbow when his knee threatened to buckle; once, he reached for a thorn caught in her sleeve and picked it free before she tore the fabric.
At noon, Audrey called. The kitten was female, roughly ten weeks old, with swelling and a dirty cut but no broken bone. The veterinarian wanted to see how she responded to treatment before they considered returning her.
“How long?” Paul asked.
“I can’t give you a date yet. We have to see how she does.”
Audrey asked them to keep track of the mother’s movements without approaching the family. Tess brought down the trail camera she had given Paul the Christmas after Marian died; he had used it mainly to find what was raiding the garden.
They set it beside the existing animal trail, well away from the hollow. At dusk, the first clip showed the mother crossing alone with something hanging from her mouth. Paul watched it three times before he could be sure it was prey and not a kitten.
“Send it to Audrey,” Tess said.
He forwarded the clip, then set his phone on the porch rail between them. Neither spoke until the screen went dark.
Joel arrived Saturday morning with Mae Sutton, the forester who had drawn the harvest map. After watching the camera clip, she led them around the far side of the meadow.
The lower route had been the cheapest way to reach the marked timber. From the kitchen table it had looked like a tidy curve; on foot, avoiding the chestnut meant either crossing wet ground or climbing a ridge where the turns were tighter and fewer trees were worth hauling out.
Mae checked the upper slope while Joel studied the turn below a leaning poplar. He scraped a line in the dirt with his heel.
“I can work the upper block from the county-road entrance,” he said. “Separate landing. Less timber. But the bottom stays out of it.”
“Can’t we just leave a strip around the log?” Paul asked.
Mae pointed beyond it, toward the creek and the continuous woods farther down the valley. “That cover connects to something. You’d be leaving them an island in the middle of the traffic.”
Back at his tailgate, Joel calculated the smaller harvest and the extra operating costs, checking his figures twice. The revised sale would bring Paul seventy-six hundred dollars altogether, including the advance he’d already received.
“I can’t get back to you before late summer with this route,” Joel said. “And I can’t keep the old price on the smaller job.”
“You could help me a little.”
Joel put his pencil down. “Paul. I am.”
Tess looked down at the map.
Paul stood with it between his hands until he could say, “You’re right.”
In the kitchen, Tess subtracted the revised timber proceeds from the full roof price. Then she worked out how much of his emergency savings would have to cover the difference.
He would have fourteen hundred dollars left. The porch steps weren’t included. Neither was the furnace he and Joel coaxed through every winter…
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